Diamond Dogs
by Second Star On The Left
Summary: They're as bright and beautiful and wonderful and alive and real as they are terrible ruins, and Sansa never, ever expected to love even one of them half as much as she loves them all. (An Ashes To Ashes fusion)


_The knife slides home and it almost doesn't hurt, four inches of steel sunk into her back and an all-too-familiar hand cradling her throat._

_"It's just business, sweetheart," Joff whispers, thumb stroking over and back across her pulse as she tumbles sideways into shock. "Just business."_

* * *

Sansa wakes up suddenly and sits up sharply and it _hurts, _it really sincerely hurts because she's fairly sure that she was just stabbed and shouldn't it hurt a lot more?

Why _doesn't _it hurt a lot more?

"Ah," an unfamiliar voice calls - rich, Oxbridge accent but dulled by something else. "I think that's our new DI, chaps. If you wouldn't mind, Oberyn?"

A copper with dark eyes and a wicked grin crouches down and helps her to her feet, and Sansa thinks she might be sick because the room won't stop spinning and why is everyone dressed as if they're at a fancy dress party? Come to that, why is _Sansa_ dressed like this? Jesus, it's not the eighties-

_Except you've just been stabbed, and weren't you considering that maybe Theon Greyjoy's stories weren't delusions but rather his mind's way of coping with the damage done to his body? Could yours be doing the same?_

"I've been stabbed," she whispers, slipping her hand around her back and feeling for the wound - smooth skin under her blouse, smooth even where she used to have a burn scar from the time Arya tripped and spilled hot milk on her. "Or not, as the case may be."

"You alright, ma'am?"

She looks around, takes in the team-

"Oh my God," she says breathlessly, clapping her hands over her mouth and beginning to laugh. "You're _them."_

* * *

They are indeed _them, _as she so eloquently put it. They're the same team from Theon Greyjoy's coma fantasies, the very same except in place of the pretty young WPC there's an older PC, the very same one who helped Sansa up earlier. His name, apparently, is Oberyn Martell, and he makes _fantastic_ coffee.

But the other three, she's read all about them - Viserys Targaryen, who tries so desperately to live up to his guv's towering reputation. Ashara Dayne, beautiful and just as much a hard-arse as you'd imagine a female DS in the seventies (well, the eighties, now) has to be.

And Detective Chief Inspector Willas Tyrell, who walks with a cane because he was shot in the knee taking out a Russian pimp operating out of Brixton.

Theon Greyjoy had never mentioned that DCI Tyrell was, well, kind of beautiful.

DCI Tyrell ushers her into his office as soon as they arrive back at the station, laughing off the wolf-whistles that follow them, and frowning quietly at any who make less-than-savoury comments about Sansa's bum, shown off to spectacular advantage in a white pencil skirt, of all things.

"Well, that was unpleasant," she sighs, once he has the door closed. "Thank you for your _gallant_ defence, sir, but I'm quite capable of looking after myself."

To her surprise, he laughs. She expected some sort of backlash for that, if she was being honest, because this is the eighties, isn't it? Are her own more enlightened views of women influencing her delusions?

"Oh, Oberyn's going to _love_ you," he assures her, shaking his head, still smiling. "Tell me, DI Stark - are you a feminist, by any chance?"

"Absolutely," Sansa says fiercely, because if he thinks-

"Good," he says. "I can't act unless I witness something for myself or it's reported, but I'm locked away in here most of the day - you're in the thick of it, so give Oberyn what for if he acts the bugger or misbehaves. As DI, you're my second in command, after all - the Messiah to my Almighty, for those poor bastards in the outer office."

He laughs when she spends twenty minutes sitting in his office, trying to make sense of everything. He says she reminds him of Theon, which somehow doesn't surprise Sansa, considering she's apparently copied Greyjoy's coma fantasy wholesale.

_I need to get back to Rickon, _she decides as she takes her seat at the desk inside the door, the biggest desk in the outer room. _Which means beating the shit out of whatever comes at me here, because this is my mind's reaction to my body's trauma, and a success here could mean a success in reality._

That had been a theory of hers, when she'd read Greyjoy's file. Jesus, she never expected to find herself in his position.

"Right then," she says bracingly, tossing back her hair and wincing at the tug of her heavy, gaudy earrings. "What are we working on?"

* * *

DCI Tyrell takes the gun from her hands before she can drop it, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders and guides her back to the car.

"I was supposed to wake up," she whispers, and all she can think is that she hopes Jon is looking after Rickon.

Then she feels sick, because she just put a bullet into Joff's father's head, because if he's dead then Joff can't exist because Joff hasn't been born yet, so she should have woken up straight away and _why is she still here, _and she's never killed anyone before, but she has now, and even if this _is_ only a dream and even if he _was _going to shoot little Targ, she _killed someone, _and the guv has to pull over so she can throw up.

* * *

She doesn't get home. She thinks that maybe, maybe it'll be a case of falling asleep and waking up in the hospital, maybe she has to die here to get home, she doesn't fucking know, but what she does know is that seeing her aunt, Lyanna, who looks so insanely like Arya and who died nearly four years before Sansa was born _oh shit about now, _is insane.

Everything is insane. Sansa's beginning to think that maybe _she's _insane, especially considering she can't stop thinking about how good it would be to sleep with one of her delusions.

The rest of the team are easy to handle - Targ, Viserys, he's sweet and eager to help and strangely innocent, for all that Sansa can practically _smell _how badly he wants to be promoted from DC. Ashara is a bit more difficult, all sharp edges and deflections and possibly a long-standing affair with Oberyn, who just flirts with everyone (which has nearly gotten him beaten up a few times, when he tries it on with men).

But then there's the guv.

She can't get a read on him at all. She's not sure she wants to, because if she does he might stop looking at her over the rim of his glass like he's trying to figure her out when they go to Chataya's after work and she knows that she doesn't want that.

Still, nothing, nothing at all, will stop her from stopping her aunt's death. She's _certain_ that this is what'll get her home. It has to be. She must have been sent here to find out the truth about Lyanna's death and that must be why she didn't get home after the mess with the Baratheons. That _has _to be it.

But then she keeps digging, and Ashara is having an affair with Sansa's uncle, who was murdered by the Targaryens (_Oh my God Viserys is one of them his father murdered my uncle and my grandfather_) along with her grandfather not long before Lyanna died, and Lyanna is having an affair with a married man, a _Targaryen,_ and-

"Jon's my brother," Sansa says, shaking her head because none of this makes sense. Jon is, Jon is Sansa's brother, he looks just like Dad, he's the result of a fling Dad had while undercover...

* * *

Nothing is getting her home. She's helping solve crimes that she read about as a trainee, she's changing history, and none of it seems to matter. Nothing she does seems to get her any closer to getting home, and she's starting to see Rickon on the telly and hear his voice while she's trying to get to sleep.

Everything is so, so hard. She just wants to get home before she starts wishing she could stay here.

* * *

There's an idiot with a gun and it's pointing at Oberyn, and Sansa hits him just as the guv pulls the trigger, and the bullet-

* * *

She wanted nothing more than to get back to the real world, to Rickon and Jon.

But Rickon was perfectly fine without her - he missed her, yeah, but he doesn't need her. Now she thinks about it, he hasn't needed her in a long time.

And Jon? She can't look Jon in the eye now that she knows he's not her brother, but she can't _tell _him that he's not her brother, can she?

The team needs her. Viserys needs her to help him stay strong against his family, who constantly want him to turn into a plant, who constantly ask him to destroy some evidence and plant other evidence. He needs her to help him remember that he _does _deserve to be a DC, maybe even a DS, that he is worth more than his name.

Ashara needs her because... Well, Sansa thinks Ashara's the loneliest person she's ever known, regardless of all the company she has, regardless of how many people she knows. Sansa's the only one who knows about the baby Ashara lost (the baby that might have been Sansa's cousin), and the only one who knows how difficult things are for Ashara ever since her brother and her oldest friend were killed for being tangled up with the Targaryens. She's Ashara's only friend.

And then there's Oberyn! He's more than capable of making detective, but there's _something_, something stopping him from showing that ability - Sansa can't help but wonder if it's because he lost the same people as Ashara, her brother and friend were his friend and sister - and something that just keeps holding him back. He's here (there, this is all so confusing) because it's the right thing to do, and for Ashara, and for Willas - he was involved somehow in Willas getting shot.

And _Willas_. She misses him most of all. He's even lonelier than Ashara, his past and motivations murkier than Oberyn's, his family even more messed up than Viserys', if what she's gleaned is anything to go on.

And he calls her darling, and brings her tea in an enormous pink mug with white polka dots on it, and he sometimes walks with his hand hovering over the small of her back, and he offers her his arm when they're not on duty, and...

_And he is a figment of your imagination_, she reminds herself as she slips into PC World to pick up the printer Rickon ordered. _He is a figment of your imagination, and he is not on every single screen in the place calling you darling and asking for you to wake up. You _are _awake, and you cannot possibly be in a coma in your coma fantasies. Your coma fantasies do not, in fact, exist. They were a delusion of your comatose mind while your body was healing, you are not crazy, you're not, oh my God I'm losing my mind I'm going crazy_

* * *

"The guv's been sleeping here whenever he isn't sleeping down the nick," Ashara whispers, stepping around Willas' bad leg to help Sansa sit up. "He blames himself - I suppose he _did _shoot you in the head."

He did shoot her, that's true, but he didn't mean it. Sansa hates him for it a little bit, but he's wrecked his leg and probably his back sleeping at her bedside for... For...

"How long was I out?" she asks, and Ashara smiles.

"Two months, three weeks and two days," says Willas without opening his eyes. "Welcome back, darling."

* * *

Cersei Lannister seems to be everything Sansa needs.

She _gets it._ She seems to understand why Sansa doesn't belong here in a way the guv never did (not even when he has her bent back over his desk, hand up her skirt and mouth trailing down her neck, telling her he loves her, he _loves _her, and he might be a delusion and he might be real, she doesn't know anymore, and she thinks that maybe she loves him, too, but she has to get back to what she _knows_ is real).

She's also terrifying. She sashays in in beautiful clothes with her beautiful face and beautiful hair, and she's smooth and, and _cool_ in a way the guv isn't, for all his lazy, easy charm.

Sansa loves him, even if just a bit, but Cersei shows her a way home. Cersei shows her a way back to Rickon, and even if she wants to stay here (stay with _him_) she can't, Rickon deserves better than her being selfish.

It would be so, so easy to give up. So easy to do something for herself, which she hasn't done in years, not since Dad died and then Mum and Robb did and Arya and Bran disappeared and Jon was away in the army and it was just her and Rickon left.

Cersei is the one to raise Sansa's suspicions about Theon Greyjoy's death. Cersei is the one to guide Sansa towards Willas' role in Theon's death, Theon's and Jeyne Poole's, whatever that role had been.

It's breaking her heart to think that Willas is a murderer, but she needs to get home and all the signs for one point towards the other.

* * *

"You believe that _bitch_," Willas snarls, stumbling hard against the door as he tries to pull on his trousers, his leg almost buckling under him. "I thought that you- I thought we-"

"Willas, _please_-"

"Piss off," he warns, gritting his teeth and zipping himself up, pulling on his shirt and making for the door. "I thought there was something here, darling, I thought you- I thought you were like me, I thought you _understood,_ but obviously I was wrong."

His face is cold, his eyes hard.

"Obviously," he says sharply, "I was wrong."

* * *

There are videos.

Terrible, _terrible_ videos.

"I jumped," Ashara says, staggering blindly against the edge of her desk and clutching at her belly. "I _jumped."_

Viserys clutches at his head, lying prone on the floor and whispering something about his sister.

Oberyn is whispering about his sister, too. Whispering _"He killed her, he killed her"_ over and over, touching his face and his head all of the time.

Sansa knows what would be on her video. She doesn't need to see Joff stabbing her, or herself collapsing in a seizure in the middle of PC World.

* * *

There have been clues, and then outright instructions in some of the files Cersei gave her, and now...

"I was twenty-one," Willas says, looking horrified, as horrified as Sansa feels having just found a body, his body, buried in a clay floor cellar in the docklands. "I was a new copper, still in uniform, a PC, and I- it was my birthday. My twenty-first birthday."

"Willas," she says, reaching out towards him and feeling sick when he flinches. "Willas, please, explain this, please tell me what this is."

"He can't," Cersei says, appearing from a shadowy corner, file clutched in perfectly manicured hand. "He created himself, Sansa, don't you see? He left his family and became everything they never wanted for him, so in this world, he's everything he dreamed of _and _everything they did - the Oxford degree, but a DCI in the Met? The fancy clothes and accent, but living in a tiny flat and drinking _down the pub_ with his subordinates? He can't explain, because he thinks he controls this place. He can't even control himself - how else did you end up bent over his desk, hmm?"

There's none of that usual spark in his eyes as they wander vaguely back towards the station. Nothing of _him, _nothing at all in his eyes. Even the betrayal that's been there all week, ever since he stormed out of her room, out of her flat, since he gave what should have been her cases to Ashara.

"Willas," she whispers, trying to catch his hand, but his fingers are limp and cold in her hold and slip away from her.

* * *

"Your beloved guv knew all this," Cersei announces, standing on top of Sansa's desk while Willas curls around his bad leg, the leg she just drove the sharp heel of her exquisite red patent pump into. "He's known all along what you are, _where _you are. Has he done anything to help you? Has he done anything but _lie?"_

Sansa can't stand this - he's Willas, he wouldn't lie, would he?

"Willas?"

He can't meet her eyes.

"Willas," she whispers, edging towards him as Cersei pirouettes to the floor. "_Please."_

"He's a lying toerag, sweetheart," Cersei murmurs, long fingers wrapping around Sansa's wrist, sharp nails digging into her skin. "Come on, don't you want to see Rickon again?"

She's been seeing Rickon everywhere, especially in the dreams she has when she's asleep with Willas curled around her, and he's so happy, he _doesn't_ need her, he's nearly nineteen and he's so like Robb that sometimes she can't breathe.

"Willas. Look at me."

So he looks at her, and she knows that it's true. She hates it, and she doesn't want it to be true.

"I was going to give up on my brother," she chokes out, and he reaches a hand up and touches her, just the backs of her fingers. "I was going to stay here. Stay with _you_. And you acted the whole time as if you didn't know, and you _did-"_

"I forgot," he says, coughing in agony as Cersei's pointed toe slams into his stomach. "I forgot everything, Sansa."

* * *

"Oberyn, promotion to DS, effective immediately," Willas says into the walkie-talkie, clutching his ribs (Sansa checked, she thinks Cersei cracked at least one with that kick). "Ashara, pardon me for saying it but there's not another woman in the world with an arse equal to yours in a pencil skirt, and we'll need that rump of yours if we're to pull this off. Viserys... I don't care what anyone says. I _trust _you, kiddo."

Sansa helps him into his office, helps him out of jacket and waistcoat and shirt and uses all of the bandages from the first aid kit to tape up his ribs. She helps him get them back on, and then finds painkillers, and hides his brandy so he has to take them with water.

_I love him_, she thinks. _I'm dying in the real world and I don't even care, _she thinks, leaning her forehead against his and closing her eyes at the feeling of his fingers in her hair.

Ashara strides in looking a million in the air hostess' uniform. Oberyn's out of uniform, and Viserys looks calmer than Sansa's ever seen him.

"Come on then," Willas says, straightening his tie and forcing himself to his feet - his leg, his stomach, his rib, they have to be killing him, but he stands straight and tall and he looks so _beautiful_ Sansa feels like crying.

They all do, she suddenly realises. They're as bright and beautiful and wonderful and alive and _real_ as they are terrible ruins, and Sansa never, ever expected to love even one of them half as much as she loves them all.

"When we've won the day," Willas says, shrugging into his coat and holding out his hand to Sansa. "When all this is done, we'll go down the pub."

* * *

It all goes swimmingly.

The pub is not Chataya's, but Ashara and Viserys recognise it.

"Well I'll be damned," Viserys whispers. "Welcome home."

Ashara surprises them all by taking Oberyn's hand and smiling tearfully.

"We're not alone, Oberyn," she says. "Now come buy me a drink."

* * *

"I love you," she says against his mouth. "Please don't make me go with them, _please-"_

"I have nothing to offer you, darling," he whispers, pulling her closer into his arms, wishing so much he could keep her with him. She makes it all bearable. If he had her, he might not want to forget everything. "You deserve more than this, Sansa. More than me."

"I don't want more," she sobs, burying her face against his throat. "I want _you_."

"Go on, darling."

"You'll be alone," Sansa says desperately, lifting her head to meet his eyes. God, she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, if he hadn't become this she would never have looked twice at him, and he aches to keep her but that would be wrong and he can't, he can't subject her to this, to him. "You'll be alone with _her, _Willas, I-"

"I'll manage, darling," he promises her, kissing her again, harder than before and hoping it'll make her understand. "Now go on, before your fiddly cocktail gets warm. Go on, Sansa."

She backs away slowly, holding onto his hands for as long as she can, smiling as best she can even though she's hiccuping back sobs and there are tears streaming down her pretty pink cheeks.

"I love you," she whispers at the door, pale light catching on the gold in her red, red hair. "I can stay."

"No," he disagrees. "No, you can't."

The door creaks shut behind her, and his heart breaks.

Then he hears Cersei laugh, and he knows it's going to happen all over again.

Part of him doesn't think he'll be able to do it. The rest remembers Sansa laughing at Oberyn and Theon asking for his mobile, and others before them.

He remembers Sansa laughing, steps around Cersei, and gets back to the nick. Someone, more than one someone, needs him.

He has a job to do.


End file.
